Civilisation : its cause and cure and other essays / by Edward Carpenter.

  • Edward Carpenter
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Civilisation : its cause and cure and other essays / by Edward Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    30/312 page 26
    says A. R. Wallace in his Malay Archipelago vol. ii. p. 460), “ with communities in South America and the East, who have no laws or law courts, but the public opinion of the village . . . yet each man scrupulously respects the rights of his fellows, and any infraction of those rights rarely takes place. In such a community all are nearly equal. There are none of those wide dis¬ tinctions of education and ignorance, wealth and poverty, master and servant, which are the pro¬ duct of our civilisation.” Indeed this community of life in the early societies, this absence of division into classes, and of the contrast between rich and poor, is now admitted on all sides as a marked feature of difference between the conditions of the primitive and of civilised man.1 Lastly, with regard to the mental condition of the Barbarian, probably no one will be found to dispute the contention that he is more easy-minded and that his consciousness of Sin is less developed than in his civilised brother. Our unrest is the penalty we pay for our wider life. The missionary retires routed from the savage in whom he can awake no sense of his supreme wickedness. An American lady had a servant, a negro-woman, who on one occasion asked leave of absence for the next morning, saying she wished to attend the Holy Communion ? “ I have no objection,” said the mistress, “ to grant you leave ; but do you think you ought to attend Communion ? You know you have never said you were sorry about 1 See Appendix.
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